Mindful Presencing in this New Year

Last month I was in Nepal at my dear lama friend’s mountaintop monastery, Druk Amitabha Gompa, overlooking the Kathmandu Valley. His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa was giving a series of teachings interspersed with special prayers and pujas, chants and rituals, dedicated for various purposes. I was seated near HH onstage in a small row of red-robed lamas, when suddenly – amidst it all, the pomp and circumstance, the deep beats of the giant drum, the Tibetan long horns, the rattle of hand rums and the cacophony of 800 people chanting together– I realized that if I only released my resistance– all of it!– I was totally aligned and one with Him and the Buddha, and all and everything. This sorta Taoist realization of Dzogchen non-doing and effortless spontaneity lasted just a several timeless, breath stopping, globe-halting, earth shattering seconds, but it made me a servant for life.

I understood, felt and intuitively grokked right then and there that there was and is no separation between God and soul and man (me, you), and that Buddha, guru-lama and meditation practitioner/yogi are one continuum of ineffable luminous energy-flow and presence-immediacy. All I had to do was let go into it– that is, let go of and release my dichotomous subject-object fixation and self-centered mental perceptual framework–and relax back into, instead of congealed out of, the flux and flow of it all (all and everything) and natural primordial oneness would be realized, recognized and attained. I would be congruent with truth and divinity, one with the flow, the great Tao and my ultimate higher/inner power. I was the master and the master’s Buddha-mind, and the prayers and the music too. I was the entire assembly, the sangha, and the sangha circle of all beings too.

All I have to do is align myself with that, and flow in the flow as the flow; and by doing nothing, nothing is left undone. Being aligned with the masters and the divine, in the flow, the better angels of one’s higher true-nature surge forth and altruistic compassion in action naturally follows, as needed, inexhaustibly.

I invite you to consider experimenting with doing the same in this new year, through focused introspective awareness and the practice of mindful presencing.